


one with frost fingers and one with a dragon tongue

by SilverMyfanwy



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dragons, Gen, Kid Fic, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-23 22:10:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19710451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMyfanwy/pseuds/SilverMyfanwy
Summary: Perhaps letting two magical five-year-olds loose at the Thing wasn't the best idea.





	one with frost fingers and one with a dragon tongue

**Author's Note:**

> The things my brain comes up with.  
> Inspired by picture below.

The Thing.

The Thing was always approached with the upmost, absolute caution by Stoick the Vast, chief of the Hairy Hooligans of Berk All Hear His Name And Tremble, Ugh, Ugh. This wasn’t because he was met at the Thing by scowls or silent gestures when the Grand High Bard wasn’t looking. It was because the Thing, or more truthfully, the drinking and feasting afterwards, often led to blood feuds, wars, rash promises to other tribes, brawls, murder and flytings.

Flytings normally ended in blood feuds or duels to the death, but as murder, bloodshed-through-violence and duels were all forbidden on the island where the Thing was held, it tended to be the floating island made of wooden boards and ship decks anchored just off the island’s coast that saw all the gore. The floating island also played host to a number of makeshift pubs and the odd fight ring. One year, a boar pen nearly got made a compulsory, annual feature although a planning sub-committee somewhere on another island boycotted the move and the proposition fell through.

Following the chaos a the Thing the year before, he had gone back to Berk to find even more chaos as there were three houses burnt down, a Nadder in the Great Hall and a rampaging bloodhound pack living in the forest after Hiccup had been left in the care of Gobber.

This, and a lengthy, raging meeting in the Great Hall following his return to Berk, had resulted in the decision that he would be taking Hiccup with him to the Thing the next year or the island would be firing him as chief and selling him and Hiccup to the first slave-trading ship to appear on the horizon and the island would take on the form of an anarchic settlement.

The year went past, Hiccup became even better at talking to dragons and his capability to cause chaos increased tenfold.

Stoick could not have been dreading the Thing more.

-

“Granddad, please can I go with you to the Thing? Please can I, please can I?” Jack was dangling from North’s sleeve, feet kicking out wildly in the air. A number of elves and yetis stared hopefully at North.

“You do not take him, we will let the Bunny take over this year's Christmas plans while you are gone.” Phil muttered darkly.

North’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline and he nodded quickly. “Ok, Ok, I will take you with me, Jack.”

It was as if the whole North Pole clapped, which it pretty much did.

Jack cheered. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome. But you will have to behave, that means your very best behaviour and then some, young man.” North looked down at Jack. “So that means you will be having etiquette lessons with Sandy every day until we go.”

“Sandy! Yay!” Jack got to his feet. “I like Sandy! What is et-i-cut?”

“Manners and behaving correctly. Can you tell me what your best behaviour is?”

Jack nodded eagerly. “Yeah! Best behaviour is only taking one plate of cookies from the kitchens instead of two and rubbing my feet dry on the carpet instead of taking snow everywhere and asking the reindeer if they will let me put the fairy lights from the front door on their hantlers instead of not asking!”

“Antlers, not hantlers.” North said faintly, pinching the bridge of his nose.

It was going to be a very long couple of weeks.

-

Hiccup did not want to go to the Thing.

“Well why not?” Stoick demanded.

“I have got plans already.”

“What plans?”

Hiccup ran to his room and returned with an armful of papers covered in diagrams and his messy handwriting. He dumped them in Stoick’s lap and beamed up at his father. “Here are my plans!”

“What in Odin’s name are these?”

“My plans.”

“Plans for what?”

“Plans for taming a Deadly Nadder and making it my bodyguard so that Snotlout stops hitting me.”

Stoick was aghast. “You want to tame a Deadly Nadder?”

Hiccup nodded, looking up at his father with big earnest eyes.

“If you want a bodyguard, I’ll hire one. How and why- why on Earth would you tame a dragon, Hiccup?”

“Because I want to.”

“You’re coming to the Thing with me.”

Hiccup opened his mouth to complain but Stoick cut him off with a firm glare.

“We are going to the Thing.”

“Okay. What’s the Thing?”

-

Jack’s etiquette lessons with Sandy did not start as well as North had hoped.

The first lesson ended with Sandy covered in custard, the second left the dining room ceiling permanently stained and in the third Jack was accidentally taught seven new swear words and spent the next four hours running around singing them. He only stopped when Phil caught him and took him to the kitchen to have his mouth washed out with soap only to find out that Jack had used it all up trying to give a stray polar bear a bath the morning before.

After that disastrous low, Jack’s lessons began to make slow progress. After finally managing to get him to understand the concept of Viking cutlery and how dangerous it was, Sandy was able to teach Jack the finer parts of Viking table manners. They left most of it as they were not habits North or anyone else wanted Jack to pick up and keep permanently as they all knew he would. Diplomacy took rather a while to get a hang of but they got there eventually, with just the right combination of Viking diplomacy and Father Christmas diplomacy. A fairy came the day before they left to enchant Jack so that he would be able to understand what the Vikings were saying and then they set off.

-

Hiccup took one look at the Thing and decided he did not want to go.

“There are loads of people.” he complained.

“Hiccup, we have to go.”

“But I don’t want to go! I want to try and tame a Deadly Nadder at _home_!”

“Ah! Stoick!” an accented voice boomed over from another ship and Hiccup and Stoick turned to look.

“North!”

The man with the accent was even taller than Stoick, but Hiccup barely noticed anything other than his long white beard and red coat because there was a small boy with white hair and a blue tunic standing at his feet. He rushed behind Stoick’s legs and the other boy waved eagerly. Hiccup smiled back tentatively.

“My name’s Jack.” The other boy whispered over the sound of their adults laughing and talking.

“’m Hiccup.”

“Hiccup?” Jack pulled a face. “That’s a strange name.”

“All Vikings have strange names.”

“Really?”

Hiccup took a step out from behind Stoick’s legs and nodded. “I have a friend called Fishlegs.”

“I like fish.” Jack said. “My granddad says that there will be lots of fish to eat here. He said that dragons might attack. Have you ever seen a dragon??”

“Loads.” Hiccup smiled. “Thousands and thousands and thousands. I can talk to them.”

Jack’s eyes went wide and his eyebrows shot up. “You can talk to _dragons_?”

Hiccup nodded smugly.

“Prove it.” Jack folded his arms.

“OK. But later, when the adults are gone.”

“If you can really talk to dragons, I’ll show you what I can do.” Jack offered smoothly. “I can bend the wind and I can move ice and snow and make ice.”

“You can make ice?” Hiccup pulled a face. “Why would you want to do that? There’s too much ice anyway, we don’t need anymore!”

“But ice is fun! You can skate on it!”

“Skate? Skate’s a type of fish!”

Jack tilted his head quizzically. “Skate’s a type of fish?” he tugged on North’s coat. “Granddad is skate a type of fish?”

North shrugged and turned to Stoick. “Is skate a type of fish?”

“It is indeed.” Stoick beamed down at Hiccup. “You making a new friend, Hiccup?”

In response, Hiccup hid behind Stoick’s legs again. Stoick laughed it off. “Oh well. We’d best be off to the Thing now or we’ll be the last ones there and that’s never good.”

-

For a pair of five-year-olds, the Thing went something like this:

First, it was too loud. Ear deafening, good-natured yelling and screaming.

The sharp, pointy things started getting thrown around and it got dangerous.

And then it got really, really boring because they all started debating.

Half way into hour two, Jack caught Hiccup’s eye and gestured to the side. Hiccup didn’t move, unsure of what Jack wanted him to do, but when Jack started to silently walk out of the arena, Hiccup followed.

Jack didn’t stop until they were a safe distance away from any adults and then turned to Hiccup. “What shall we do?”

Hiccup thought for a moment. “Have you ever met a dragon?”

-

It turned out that Jack had never met a dragon.

Hiccup soon fixed this, and the adults soon found about it when the cheers of two small boy could be heard coming from the back of a Monstrous Nightmare flying overhead.

It was at this point the adults noticed the burnt ship, the loose chickens and the ice sculpture of a reindeer standing on its back legs.

-

Hiccup and Jack stared shamefaced at the ground as they were read the riot act by their respective adults, but neither of them were truly bothered. When the telling off was over, they grinned at each other and quietly trotted off to stake out a bridge in search of a troll. As they went, frost appeared under Jacks feet and Terrible Terrors flocked around Hiccup’s head to perch on his shoulders.

“Will you be my best friend?” Jack asked Hiccup.

“Forever and always.” Hiccup promised.

And they must have been, for the legends tell of a man who could speak to dragons and a man who could freeze water with a glare and how they would spend hours flying together, one on a dragon and one with a staff.


End file.
